Johalla Projects Presents JESSICA TAYLOR CAPONIGRO: BLACK DAMP
JESSICA TAYLOR CAPONIGRO: BLACK DAMP
MAY 11 – JUNE 2, 2013
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 11 from 7-10PM
Gallery Hours: By Appointment Only
Johalla Projects is pleased to announce Jessica Taylor Caponigro: Black Damp, its first solo exhibition with Chicago artist Jessica Taylor Caponigro. The exhibition is curated by Aimee Quinkert. It will run from MAY 11 to JUNE 2. Please join us for an opening reception on Saturday, May 11 from 7-10pm.
Jessica Taylor Caponigro’s creative process explores a fascination with the vague familiarity of repetition in prosaic materials. While many of the patterns found within her work seem recognizable on a level, the themes are quite intimate and coexist with both the work’s accessibility and the artist’s personal experiences.
Black Damp examines the patterns and narrative situations translated by the film adaptation of a particular piece of literature. For example, DH Lawrence’s classic Sons and Lovers is partially responsible for some of these pieces, as they eclipse specific scenes and become more about the integral life experiences of the characters, as well as those of both the audience and the artist. The literal definition of the term “black damp” is “a non-explosive mine gas that cannot support life or flame.” Had one read Lawrence’s text or had an in-depth conversation with Caponigro about her upbringing and the historical context of the town in which she was raised, the underlying themes would be obviously parallel. Her deliberate choices affect the viewer’s perception, providing that each individual who encounters it has a somewhat communal, but uniquely distinct experience.
JESSICA TAYLOR CAPONIGRO – Before receiving her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Jessica Taylor Caponigro attended Bryn Mawr College where she earned her BA in the History of Art. She has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Olive Harvey College, and Spudnik Press. She is currently an adjunct instructor at Harold Washington College. Jessica was the Spudnik Press Summer Artist in Residence and has been a resident artist at ACRE on two separate occasions. In addition to solo and group shows in Chicago, her work has been exhibited in Long Beach, Philadelphia, and Rome. Her work is in the permanent collections at California State University-Long Beach and the Joan Flasch Artists’ Books Collection. She was also featured in Johalla Projects’Wow-House group show. This is her first solo exhibition with the gallery.
In addition to the pieces on exhibit, there will also be limited edition prints available for sale during the opening reception.
For more information, please contact Anna Cerniglia at johallaprojects@gmail.com.
Johalla Projects Presents TODD DIEDERICH: LUMINOUS FLUX
TODD DIEDERICH: LUMINOUS FLUX
APRIL 5 – APRIL 28, 2013
Opening Reception: Friday, April 5 from 7-10pm
Johalla Projects is pleased to announce TODD DIEDERICH: LUMINOUS FLUX, its first solo exhibition with Chicago photographer Todd Diederich. The exhibition will run from APRIL 5 to APRIL 28. Please join us for an opening reception on Friday, April 5 from 7-10pm.
Todd Diederich’s photographs are cultural artifacts. The consummate anthropologist, Diederich spends time laboriously patrolling the city streets, using the camera as a method of transcription and interpretation. In its barest sense, LUMINOUS FLUX functions as an excuse to deliberate the perplexing, often bizarre personality that is Chicagoland. However, while each of Diederich’s photographs can serve as a literal document, as viewers we are transported to a different place – one bursting with character, color, and peculiarity. Claiming inspiration from the “energy sources throughout the cosmos”, Diederich has a knack for finding the pulse of the moment. It is with this very same capacity that he truly captures the flux, often discovering the very essence of human interaction and emotion. In this sense, Diederich’s LUMINOUS FLUX seizes the transformative moments of impulse and provides an opportunity to contemplate the fleeting.
TODD DIEDERICH: Creator, inventor, and channeler working through photographic imagery, digital video, and anything else that can leave a mark. Diederich is a former VICE magazine contributor and a 2010 Propeller Fund awardee. In addition to a 2011 solo exhibition at ACRE Projects, Diederich’s work has been featured in Oyster magazine, Paper Magazine, Complex, Design Bureau and the Chicago Reader. A monograph entitled Luminous Flux is soon to be released. Currently runswww.BeOddDieRich.com.
For more information, please contact Anna Cerniglia at johallaprojects@gmail.com.
Johalla Projects Presents the YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL Project at 35 Denton Music Festival
JOHALLA PROJECTS AND “YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL” PROJECT HEAD TO 35 DENTON MUSIC FESTIVAL
MARCH 7 – MARCH 10, 2013
35 DENTON MUSIC FESTIVAL
DENTON, TEXAS
This year, the 5th annual 35 Denton Music Festival will feature a large-scale art installation by artist Matthew Hoffman, produced by Johalla Projects. The 100 foot long sculpture reads “You Are Beautiful” in 8 foot tall wooden letters on the roof of the Dan’s Silverleaf music venue in downtown Denton, Texas.
Ten years ago, Hoffman quietly started a simple sticker campaign called “You Are Beautiful” with 100 stickers. Since then, over a half million stickers have traveled around the world and the campaign has evolved into block long murals, public installations, and exhibitions at cultural institutions involving thousands of artists. The campaign’s history is rich, but the message remains clear, “Stay strong, and never forget: You Are Beautiful.”
This collaboration is Johalla Projects’ latest effort in their ongoing mission to expose the public to art outside the gallery walls. By showcasing Hoffman’s message at the festival, Johalla Projects hopes to foster 35 Denton’s belief in an intimate exchange between artist and attendee that cultivates a bond within the community.
For more information, please contact Director Anna Cerniglia or Press Manager Jaclyn Mellini at johallaprojects@gmail.com.
Rational Park Presents: GRAFTS & RUPTURES – New work by Jordan Martins
GRAFTS & RUPTURES: NEW WORK BY JORDAN MARTINS
JANUARY 19 – FEBRUARY 12, 2013
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 19 from 7-10PM
Rational Park
2557 W North Ave.
Chicago, IL 60647
Gallery Hours: 10-4, M-F
Chicago based visual artist Jordan Martins will exhibit new collage and mixed media work at Rational Park from January 19th until February 12th. Martins’ work features intuitively crafted worlds of candy-like bold color, vintage imagery and contrasting textures. Much like the spaceships and comic book hero drawings from his youth which built up complicated surfaces and rippled muscles through brute repetition, Martins’ collages create a space where new visual languages can develop and take shape. By manipulating and layering each fragment, he builds up to a larger, more captivating form. This multidimensional mashup results in wonderful tension between the chaos of the larger composition and the orderly, contained details of collage.
The title of one recent series, Ghost Nets, references a phenomenon in which fishing net scraps co-join in the ocean to form unruly conglomerations that both create provisional ecosystems and entrap and suffocate sea life–an apt metaphor for the images within the collage that take on new meaning when bound together with other images while remaining ensnared by their previous associations. Martins’s Ghost Nets are punctuated by bold shapes and patterns with whirling, dripping masses floating atop muted painted backdrops that possess a suspended quality like the nomadic, detritus-bound sea communities for which this series is named.
Live musical performance by: Ben Babbitt
For more information regarding this exhibition or about Rational Park, please contact everyone@rational-park.com.
Johalla Projects is in collaboration with Rational Park.
Upcoming “Nowhere” named as one of “Ten Must See Art Shows” in the Fall by Chicago Magazine
Our upcoming solo show with Ian Whitmore was named of the “Ten Must See Art Shows” in the Fall by Chicago Magazine along with the likes of Danh Vo, Steve McQueen, Melanie Schiff, and more!
Johalla Projects Presents NIGHT VISIONS: New work by Heather Gabel
Night Visions: New Work by Heather Gabel
OCTOBER 12 – OCTOBER 28, 2012
Opening Reception: Friday, October 12, 7-11 PM
Gallery Hours: By appointment only
While much of Heather’s earlier work deals with beautifully macabre imagery intertwined with stark lines and the graceful opulence of the past, Night Visions seeks to explore emptiness and loss, personal connectivity with the dead, and the preponderance of a spiritual after life—something more. Gabel’s new work also interrogates the inherently obsessive nature of grief while embracing the compulsive, and often consuming, self-created rituals custom-tailored to free the feelings we wish not to suffer, but the raw pathos that is unifying and undeniably human. While these experiences shape and change us; sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, a compression of time and personal, intimate histories foster an environment where a glitch in the records of memory can be highlighted, manipulated, and expressed.
The show will include new mixed media collage, photographs, prints, and shirts.
About the Artist: Born in Windsor, Canada in 1977, Heather started drawing and painting since she was a tiny child and has never stopped since. She attended the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit on a photography scholarship and finished her arts education at Columbia College in Chicago with a bachelor of Fine Arts degree. She exhibits both nationally and internationally, at present.
Her work is at once nostalgic and contemporary as she is inspired to create imagined situations culled from her best dreams and worst nightmares offering a look into what was, what is and what will never be. Experienced with many mediums, she combines, photography, painting and collage in a unique fashion to create iconic images that have a lasting impact on the viewer.
For more information, contact johallaprojects@gmail.com.
